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Seane Corn Occupies Wall Street
photo: J.T. Liss (Photography for Social Change)
More people are taking their yoga off the mat and onto the street--Wall Street, that is. Since the beginning of the Occupy Wall Street movement on Sept. 17, yogis Russell Simmons, Deepak Chopra and Michael Franti have joined the masses and lent their voices and celebrity to the cause.
Yoga teacher and activist Seane Corn joined the chorus this morning, leading nearly 200 yogis in a practice of community, solidarity, and change.
"This gathering [on Wall Street] is not about being 'against' something or someone. It is about being 'for' unity, freedom of speech, and justice," Seane Corn explained on her Facebook page on Saturday.
Corn founded Off the Mat, Into the World, an organization "that uses the power of yoga to inspire conscious, sustainable activism and to ignite grass roots social change," according to the group's website.
"OTM supports all societies rights to express dissatisfaction and ask for change.
This is what we GET to do and is a right that we should cherish and protect. I am not for the 99% and against the 1%. I am for the 100% getting our shit together and remembering we are ONE."
Ana Forrest Pairs With Organization to Help Wounded Vets
An organization doing some amazing work helping wounded veterans has just added another warrior to its ranks. From Nov. 4-6, Ana Forrest will hold public workshops in Tampa, Florida, to benefit the Exalted Warrior Foundation (EWF), a non-profit that has taught adaptive yoga to wounded warriors in military and veteran hospitals since 2006.
On Nov. 7, Forrest will accompany EWF teachers to Tampa's James A Haley Veterans
Hospital, one of the largest spinal cord and trauma units in the United
States, to meet and work with the wounded there.
If you've even studied Forrest Yoga, you know that the classes emphasize being fierce, cutting through fear to get to the truth. Working with wounded vets fits right into to this philosophy."I feel very strongly about offering up my skills to these women and men that offer up their health and their lives," says Forrest. "I want to support the people who make it possible for me to live in a war-free zone in my own country, and that's our warriors."
Students come EWF classes with a range of injuries, including amputations, brain and spinal cord injuries, and post traumatic stress disorder, and a host of other conditions. Classes include gentle breathing, gentle to more intense stretching, and meditation.
"Faced with the demands of both a physical and emotional recovery,
yoga allows newly disabled veterans to reconnect both with themselves
and their loved ones," the EWF website states. "These methods of yoga exercises, relaxation, and meditation are keys to wellness that the warrior can practice for a
lifetime ... [and] will help the warrior reintegrate into their community after leaving the care of the military, returning home to a potentially fuller and more productive life."
EWF works in military hospitals and rehabilitation centers around the country, including Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Portsmouth Naval Hospital, and Brooklyn VA Hospital.
Not Your Girlfriend's Yoga
"What if you could be more virile than Hugh
Hefner, more motivated than Tony Robbins, calmer than Buddha and cooler
than James Bond?"
Got your attention? That's the hook for a new yoga conference just for men. Activation: Yoga for Men Conference will be held in San Francisco Nov. 11-13, and, as the flier predicts: This is not your girlfriend's yoga.
The conference, a collaboration between the International Yoga Therapy Conference and the Young Men's Ultimate Weekend, is an effort to introduce this ancient practice to modern men, providing them with tools that the conference organizers believe are exactly what today's men need.
Presenters Scott Blossom, Ed Harrold, Carl Speizer, Antonio Sausys, and Mark Schillinger will tackle topics including focusing willpower, improving sexual health, increasing masculine wisdom and spiritual strength, and creating healthy daily routines.
"Since yoga was once primarily the domain of men, we believe the way to lure men back is by creating confidential and sacred spaces where they can reveal themselves unmasked," organizers Sausys and Schillinger explain on the event website. "This will give men the opportunity to practice yoga in ways that meet their unique psychological,
physiological and anatomical needs."
Yoga and Breast Cancer Awareness Month
The little pink ribbons are everywhere this month. It's Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and yogis around the world are honoring the month with fundraisers, events, and campaigns. It makes sense: Studies show that yoga helps with lymphatic flow, breaks down scar tissue, and can help cancer survivors sleep better, feel more energetic and cut back on sleeping pills."Overall, we know that women with breast cancer have an altered stress response, and yoga helps with this," says Sara Gottfried, a yogi and Harvard-trained gynecologist. "If you have too many stress hormones flying through your bloodstream, we're talking cortisol mainly, yoga has been shown to be one of the best tonics. Yoga will lower your high cortisol and raise your GABA, which is nature's Valium."Last weekend, yogis raised over $43,000 during Yoga on the Steps in Washington, DC. But it's not to late to participate. At the middle of the month, yoga events are still happening around the country, with a focus on healing, education, and raising money for research. New York City; Columbia, South Carolina; and Garland, Texas: Pose for Pink events in these cities feature donation-based classes for survivors and other students to benefit The Libby Ross Breast Cancer Foundation. On Oct. 23, for example, Pure Yoga East teams up with Zobha to host an afternoon class led by Kay Kay Clivio. All of the suggested donation of $40 will go to the foundation, and all attendees will receive a limited edition Zobha tank. On Thursday, Oct. 20, the Long Island Yoga Association will host a 7pm screening of YogaWoman at the Elwood Theater in Elwood, New Jersey, with guest host Tari Prinster, who is featured in the film. See the full list of Pose for Pink events here. Los Angeles: On Oct. 29, Prana Yoga Center is holding a fundraiser from 12-1:30 led by Claire Petretti, a breast cancer survivor and Yoga for Hope activist. The suggested donation of $15 will be donated to City of Hope.Seattle: At Bria Pilates and Wellness Studio, people who bring in a recent mammogram will get 10 percent off of anything they buy. To honor Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the studio will be accepting donations during all of our classes and sending them to the the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.If you can't get to an event, you can still help: When you buy a Jade Pink Yoga Mat, $5 will be donated for breast cancer research and education.
Yoga Biz Thrives Despite Economy
While people everywhere are struggling to make ends meet yoga businesses continue to thrive, according to a recent report by CNNMoney.
Low operating costs and growing demand are fueling the success of yoga studios, many of which are mom-and-pop operations that simply want to share yoga with their communities. Of course, the still-struggling economy and high unemployment rate are also good reasons for people to look for ways to manage stress and do some soul searching.
The yoga and Pilates studio industry is expected to hit $6.5 billion by the end of this year, which is an expected annual sales growth of 9.5% between 2006 and 2011 according to reports by market research firm IBISWorld.
But studio owners aren't the only ones making a profit from yoga--just ask Asheville, North Carolina, entrepreneur Jason Scholder. Scholder is on track to make $1 million in annual sales by 2013 with his innovative yoga prop the Three Minute Egg, according to a recent article in the Asheville Citizen-Times. An alternative to traditional yoga blocks, the Three Minute Egg fits the natural curve of the spine.
"I would like to see the Three Minute Egg in every yoga studio, in every Pilates studio, in every chiropractic office and physical therapy office in the world," he told the paper.
At the rate the industry is growing, it might be hard to keep up.
Has the economy impacting how much you're willing to spend on yoga classes and products?
Is Yoga the Same as Stretching?
The news is everywhere, from USA Today to ABC: A study published on Monday shows that yoga helps with chronic back pain. Published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, the study showed that yoga and stretching equally help people with chronic back pain. In the study, 92 people took a weekly yoga class. Ninety-one took weekly stretching classes. Forty-five people got a book that gave exercise and lifestyle modifications. After 12 weeks, the people who took yoga classes and stretching classes both improved, while the "book learning" group didn't. However, yoga wasn't any more effective than stretching when it came to providing relief, which raises an interesting question: Is there a difference between yoga and stretching?
Buzz asked Loren Fishman, MD, of Manhattan Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, who prescribes yoga to his patients. "That is an excellent finding because it shows scientifically, and again, what we believed from our own experience all along--that yoga helps patients with non-specific back pain. And stretching does too," he says. However, what the study didn't measure--the psychological and behavior benefits of regular yoga--is what yoga practitioners know is unique about the practice. "It often takes more time for these types of positive changes to take hold."
John Friend's Wider Mat
If a yoga company approached you to make your dream mat, what changes would you make to the standard mat design? John Friend, the founder of Anusara Yoga dubbed by a July NY Times article as "the yoga mogul" for his business savvy, got exactly that opportunity with his partnership with yoga mat company Manduka.
Friend's biggest complaint about these sticky pieces of rubber was that they weren't wide enough to give his students the support they need in some poses. Friend recommends students practice poses like Upward-Facing Dog with their hands wide apart to give a broader foundation and more optimal alignment for the shoulders. For many students, the standard 24-inch wide mat just isn't wide enough, he said.
The new by Manduka features 30-inch wide Manduka proLite and eKO SuperLight mats (and even a wider hand towel) to give practitioners more room to find optimal alignment.
"You actually can have an inner opening by a piece of rubber on your floor," Friend said in a promo video produced by Manduka. "I'm proud to say that everything about this mat will lead to the essence of your heart."
Of course, not everyone agrees that wider mats will lead them to the essence of their hearts. One Youtube commenter points out that wider mats mean fewer people will be able to fit comfortably into already packed studios. "Are you going to be the one who shows up for a packed class with a gigantic mat, bigger than everyone else's? Who wants that reputation?" I guess one man's dream mat is another man's invasion of personal space.
Would you buy this wider mat? Does a well-known yoga teacher's endorsement make you more likely to buy a yoga product?
Photo Benefit for Off the Mat
Photo by J.T. Liss (Photography for Social Change)They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. In our time, this might also be true of a video captured by smart phone or a 140-character Tweet. Yet, there is a sense of timelessness, of depth, when a moment is captured at just the right time in a photograph. All the narrative you need is right there. That's what yogin J.T. Liss realized when he walked through the streets of Harlem. This former school teacher and counselor to at-risk youth saw beauty in human imperfection, in buildings weathered by time and neglect, in spaces and scenes that others might not notice. He saw stories everywhere that deserved to be told. "A photo can be more than just stimulates thought or evokes emotion," Liss says. "It can be an advocate for change." Liss's Photography for Social Change combines his dual desires to tell these stories through art and to give back and support organizations whose missions he believed in. This Friday, Liss joins New York blogger YogaDork in a benefit to support Off the Mat, Into the World, the not-for-profit organization founded by Seane Corn that uses the power of yoga and community to bring about social change. Liss will donate 25 percent from sales of his photos of a yoga-roadtrip across the U.S. this past summer to the organization. (The photos are also on sale online.) The event will be held at the Trump Bar in Trump Tower in Manhattan. Get details here.
Yoga Classic: New & Improved
Leslie Kaminoff never expected his humble yoga book to make a splash in 2007. But that's not what happened. The book, Yoga Anatomy, co-authored with Amy Matthews, sold out its first printing in a month and shot to Amazon's Bestsellers list, where it's been ever since. The book is in its eighth printing, is sold around the world, with over 200,000 copies in print. This week, the second edition of the book has been released. We talked to Kaminoff, also the founder of The Breathing Project, about the book's makeover: Buzz: Were you surprised that your book has become such a classic? LK: Yes, we had no idea how popular it would be.Buzz: How is the 2011 version different?LK: We've added some things that we didn't add because of previous space and time constraints. Amy has always been the coauthor, and now she's acknowledged. There are two brand new chapters, and a lot of new material based on the feedback we got. We tried to be clearer and make it easier to navigate. Buzz: Do you think it's even more relevant today?LK: More and more people drawn to therapeutic work, whether students or teachers, so we've noticed quite a lot more demand for higher quality anatomical information than people get in their regular teacher training programs.Buzz: What do you make of the book's popularity? LK: Anatomy cuts through a lot of the secular conversations that tend to go
on in all of the different schools of yoga. The one thing we all have in
common in our body. The function of the body is universal.Buzz: What is your goal for the book?LK: To be a resource for students and for anybody who works with the body. My greatest hope is for it to continue what it's been, a success far beyond what anyone imagined. Kaminoff offers an online version of his anatomy courses at www.yogaanatomy.net.
Can You Be a Christian Yogi?
By now it's common knowledge that yoga has its roots in Hinduism. For this reason one Seattle pastor says there's no room for yoga in Christianity. Yoga is demonic, says Pastor Mark Driscoll, and it can't be separated from its Hindu roots in order to make it acceptable practice for Christians. "Going to a yoga studio to practice yoga as a Christian is a bit like going into a mosque to practice Islam as a Christian," he writes in a recent blog post.
Driscoll makes his case by exploring yoga history and philosophy and citing both Hindu and yoga scholars and passages from the Bible.
"My hope is that you'll begin to see clearly how yoga at its core is much more than a physical exercise but rather a system of thought that contends against Christianity and subtly finds its way into our thinking, habits, and lifestyles," he writes.
This is not a new debate. While it's probably safe to assume that few yoga practitioners believe that the practice is demonic, many agree with Driscoll's view that yoga and Eastern spirituality cannot be separated. Even styles of yoga that appear to focus solely on the physical body or that use it as a tool for Christian worship are still in direct opposition to the Christian viewpoint that Jesus is the one and only way to salvation, according to Driscoll. Whether you agree with him or not, you have to admit he makes a compelling case.